This is Why You Will Never Be Ready

You’ll keep coming up with excuses of why you shouldn’t get started in business, why you shouldn’t take a chance to travel the world or why you should skip yet another workout session.

The secret everyone wants to know is that all of the most successful people started early and have failed many times before they have become who they are today. Let’s take Richard Branson as an example, he dropped out of the school when he was 16 years old and started pursuing his dreams and making things happen, Student magazine being his first business.

Lets get back to the design industry. There are many talented designers who started out at a very early age not even thinking that it was too early and accomplished amazing things. Take Sahil Lavingia as an example who designed the early Pinterest and currently runs a very successful startup called Gumroad. He is only 21 years old.

Another great example is Nathan Barry. He is a young designer, writer and entrepreneur who wasn’t thinking too much but made a lot of amazing things happen. He has created a couple of successful apps and self-published plenty of books making a living and really cool lifestyle. He’s only 22 years old.

What is your excuse?

There are many excuses I hear from my friends, family or just some random strangers. We will never ever be ready, humans are really strange creatures and are expecting things to line up perfectly so they can start doing something remarkable. No matter what excuse you have, you have to fight the resistance and start doing.

You will never have enough money.

You will never know everything.

You will never fully understand people.

You will never be totally happy. There will be ups and downs.

Imagine the whole journey not just a destination

I really liked the main idea of the negative thinking by Christian Jarrett in his article The Power of Negative Thinking. Whether it is a startup, a design agency or just a simple freelancing career, try to imagine all the road to success trying not to skip the failures throughout the way that will take your time and money. Imagining only the end of the road and seeing only achievements will hold you back from taking an action and creating something, not so beautiful or high-quality at the beginning.

Take exams first, learn after

Life is all about taking exams and learning afterwards. Not the other way around. Yes, you and me were raised differently. There was learning phase, clearly defined wrong and correct answers and lots of exams in the school, college or university.

Life is different.

I wanted to break free from school and see how adults are living and it turns out it’s not that fun as I imagined in the first place. Mostly everything I learnt was irrelevant, I didn’t know how to find a job, how to pay bills, how to register as a self-employed and other little but essential things in life.

“Build, understand, optimize, maintain.” — Jackson Gabbard

Last year I have taken a part in a Startup Hacks hackathon in London. I was lucky enough to meet Jackson Gabbard, an engineer at Facebook who gave a speech on how things are built in Facebook and how it allows to come up with new ideas.

Get started, stop learning

Recently I published a really inspiring story of Matt Loszak, a man behind the Jam Camera App who learnt to code in his spare time and quit his job to pursue entrepreneurial success.

“I loved the concept of learning for the sake of accomplishing a specific task, instead of learning for the sake of learning (as is sometimes the case with the current school system). I had visions of digital products that I wanted, but did not yet exist.” — Matt Loszak

Learning is fun, you’re curious to experience something new, you train your brain, become smarter, have more ideas. But knowledge is worth nothing until it’s applied. There are many people with lots of knowledge, they read all the books, know the theory word by word, but usually the rebels, the stupid ones are accomplishing things, releasing products and succeeding in business and life. It’s simply because doing is more than knowing. You can do things and learn on the way, not the other way around.

You’ll never be ready, start now

Dreaming too big sometimes stops you from taking action, start little and grow big. Anything you do doesn’t have to be perfect, that is where you will improve, that is what will keep you busy everyday.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article. If you have any questions or simply want to keep up with the things I am working find me on Twitter or Facebook.